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Springfield native has sights set on top job

Monday, February 19, 2007

By JO-ANN MORIARTY

jo-ann.moriarty@newhouse.com

WASHINGTON - By his own admission, Springfield, Mass.,
native Mike Gravel has a snowball's chance in Haiti of
getting the Democratic nomination for the presidency.

"Oh, I know I'm a longshot," said the now
76-year-old Gravel, born Maurice Robert Gravel to
French-Canadian immigrants in the City of Homes, where he
attended local schools, was raised Catholic and first got
involved in political campaigns as a youngster.

But it is not that is he without qualifications.

He left his hometown after a year in college to join the
Army and served overseas in the Counter Intelligence Corps
from 1951 to 1954. Returning home, he put himself through
Columbia University as a cab driver in New York City before
getting into the real estate development business and
settling in Alaska.

From 1962 through 1966 - when Springfield Mayor Charles V.
Ryan was serving his first term as mayor, Gravel served in
the Alaska House of Representatives and was elected House
speaker after one term. In a longshot campaign, Gravel
unseated a popular incumbent Democrat in the primary. He
went on to be elected to the U.S. Senate in 1968,
representing Alaska for two terms (12 years) before he was
defeated for re-election to a third term.

He's a classy dresser, sophisticated, pleasant and
bright.

In his own words, he is also a maverick.

"He is a major candidate in no one's eyes,"
said Larry J. Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at
the University of Virginia. "Mike Gravel had a populist
career in the Senate but that was a long time ago."

Gravel's U.S. Senate career was brief but memorable.

Gravel, who grew up in a working class family in Springfield's North End in the Round Hill neighborhood which no longer exists, was a tenacious and harsh critic of the Vietnam War....